Writers seldom write the things they think. They simply write the things they think other folks think they think. So this is my 2 cents; one man's opinion - I think. Being a writer, I've noticed a popular sentiment, usually put forth by editors & publishers (interestingly, not so much by writers) that being published in a non-paying magazine is still a plus for your career - even if there is no remuneration. How can I put this succinctly: no it isn't. That's like saying it's an honor to be nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; or to come in 2nd place at the Indy 500. Again: no it isn't. It's an honor to WIN the Pulitzer Prize, and an honor to come in 1st place at the Indy 500! But you'd get your name in front of readers, your work finally published, some would say. Really? Traditionally, publications that are so small as to be non-paying (or "token") are also just getting by, by the skin of their teeth. Most online magazines go under at an alarming rate. Why? Because they can't afford to produce their next issue, let alone pay writers. And those that offer a paltry $5.00, in my opinion, are an insult, and a slap in the face to any writer , who may have slaved for months, or years, to produce his story or article; to be rewarded only enough for a Big Mac? I don't want your charity! But your work would finally be seen ; it would be in the public's eye, they say. What part of the above did you not understand? Publications that are so small that they're produced out of a broom closet are virtual unknowns. Tell me again why it would be a feather in my professional cap to be published in Pancreas Monthly ; circulation, 58; which just happens to be the population of Monkey Testicle, Wyoming, where it's published? Oh, I almost forgot - a geriatric squirrel and a Prairie dog named Skippy also like to read it. Then again - maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it is an honor just to be published! So next time you finally get published in Turd Review, or squeal with delight because your article "I Married A Soap Dish" was bought by Cannibal Times - take the issue in question, and proudly show it to your landlord when the rent is due. Or the grocer, when Mother Hubbard's cupboard is bare. Look at the bright side: maybe the paper just might have some nutritional value! After all, it's an honor just to be published. Right? Even if Skippy the Prairie dog is illiterate.

I want to make it quite clear from the outset that I am not a neo-Luddite. And I repudiate those who would embrace such a philosophy; for example, Ted Kasinsky. But there is such a thing as the law of diminishing returns. Allow me to illustrate my point with a metaphor. Then I'll put this metaphor into a pragmatic context, with real life examples. Let's say you have to buy breakfast cereal. Simple enough, right? So you drive down to the supermarket, go down the cereal aisle, and there on the shelves are 5 different brands. Not too difficult a decision. You mull over the labels of each, and within a few minutes you've made your choice. Easy enough. Okay then, let's change this breakfast scenario. You drive down to the same supermarket, go down the same aisle, but suddenly you are confronted with not 5, but 500 choices; vaguely reminiscent of the endless warehouse scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Your mind begins to short circuit, unable to make an intelligent choice; unable to process a Library of Congress worth of visual stimuli. You either leave the store, bewildered, empty-handed and hungry; or- unable to make a smart decision, grab whatever your hand hits first. Based on the mathematics of probability, this method will most likely have you tossing said cereal in the garbage after the first serving; having determined that your haphazard choice tastes like sweetened balsa wood, mixed with colored gravel. So- was the retail manager of the supermarket doing you a favor, by giving you more choices than the Smithsonian has artifacts? In my opinion- no. All he has done is shifted profits from the cereal aisle to the pharmacy dept.- specifically, the pain reliever aisle. This is an ideal example, to illustrate the Cult of Infinite Complexity. Now let's find a practical example in life to illustrate it: something NOT near and dear to my heart- but a necessary evil- electronics; specifically , computers, and their peripheral devices. (And if anybody can tell me the logic and meaning behind the term "about blank" I'll give you a chocolate cream pie!) I have a simple little HP printer that I now only use occasionally for black & white letters. It's about 12 years old, and it was time to get a new one, since a circuit that controls color must be corrupted. (Yes, it was full) But it was a joy to use: when I wanted to print a picture or document on my hard drive, I simply went to it, clicked "Print", and a few seconds later out it popped. A kitten could do it. But alas, it was time to replace it. So I went to Wal-Mart- and got the shock of my life when I brought my new Canon printer home. No more printed manuals, of course. That would be too easy. Now everything's online. Which is just as well: my all-in-one machine would probably require a manual the size of "War and Peace"! First, it put 10 icons on my desktop. Each one, if clicked, presented you with more choices than Kink Solomon had wives. Some required additional downloads. You could change the size, the shape, the texture, the color, or the feel of the picture or document in question. Were we talking printing- or the makings of an Armani suit? Each icon presented me with at least 20 more choices, and tips, suggestions, warnings, and instructions on how to accomplish each wondrous task. Clicking any of these lines brought you into even deeper levels of "understanding"- not unlike Dante's Inferno. I was quite certain that somewhere, in the bewildering blur of guides, instructions, and infinite features flashing in front of me, was one claiming my new printer could launch an omelet out of it- if I could just figure out where it wanted me to put the eggs. Well, after sifting for hours through a near infinite number of choices of what this device was capable of accomplishing, I threw up my hands in defeat, plopped a few tablets from my 55-gallon drum of industrial strength Ibuprofen, and fired off a terse letter to Canon, with 1 specific question: how do you print a damn picture!? I suspect my old HP printer on the floor doesn't know whether to laugh or cry at my predicament. Right about now, some of you are making the disturbing connection between my supermarket analogy- and the Cult of Infinite Complexity. "Oh, now I get it!" you're saying. We've become so clogged with choices, we've become paralyzed! How did it come to this? You've got me. But I fear it's only going to get worse. You want another example of the Cult of Infinite Complexity? Go back to the 70's; even the 80's. Remember your telephone? Remember how it worked? Allow me to refresh your memory: you picked up the receiver, punched a number, then said "Hello" when Aunt Mary answered. That's it. Those days, that phone, (and Aunt Mary) are gone; replaced by- you guessed it- the Cult of Infinite Complexity. Do you ever recall getting a manual with your phone back then? Of course not. You didn't need one. Fido could have made a call. Today, Fido would have to go to doggie technical school. And don't forget your phone manual! Yeah, the phone too, now. Move over "War and Peace." Alexander Graham Bell must be spinning in his grave. I don't think this is what he meant when he called out "Come here Watson! I need you!" There's that omelet-making thing again. Hasn't anyone ever wondered why, out of al the cell phone commercials blaring from our TV's, the one thing that none of them ever seem to mention, oddly enough, out of the dizzying number of features & functions they CAN do- is how to make a phone call? Eggs over easy, please. Speaking of TV's, time was you plugged it in, turned it on, then flipped the dial (or remote) to the channel you wanted, and enjoyed your program. Period. A manual? Why? No more. Today, said manual is actually cousin to the technical instructions on a B-52's instrument panel, from the Strategic Air Command! You've got your work cut out for you! I think the new ones have a button to give you a manicure, too. And I did so want an omelet. My point is that the path towards Infinite Complexity is fast approaching asymptotic status; i.e., the graph goes vertical towards- well- infinite complexity! I know what you're thinking. You're probably laughing at the old fuddy-duddy , still stuck in 1978. Really? Wait until your grandchildren are laughing at YOU. I shudder to think what heights- or depths- the human/machine interface will evolve into by THEN. Unless, of course, there will BE no distinction! Very scary. Images of Skynet and "The Terminator" keep flashing through my mind. But for now, I fear I'll need an engineering degree tailored specifically to fuddy-duddys stuck in 1978. How difficult can it be? So if you'll excuse me, I have to enroll in M.I.T. It says all I have to do is print out the application. It's easy!

I always loved the old Ripley's Believe It Or Not stories. This is one of the strangest, proving that synchronicity is indeed alive and well in the world!In 1893, Henry Ziegland, of Honey Grove, Texas, jilted his sweetheart, who then killed herself. Her brother tried to avenge her by shooting Ziegland, but the bullet only grazed his face, and buried itself in a tree. The brother, thinking he had actually killed Ziegland, committed suicide. In 1913, Ziegland was cutting down the tree in question with the bullet in it. It was a tough job, so he used dynamite, and the explosion sent the old bullet through Ziegland's head - killing him!Who says God doesn't have a strange sense of humor?This story was originally in the book INCREDIBLE COINCIDENCE, by Alan Vaughan.

This is a strange little story I wrote, that should definitely not be read on either a full stomach, or at night. Keep a light on, too. You never know - what might be creeping up behind you. Wait---what's that sound??﻿RED DOTCopyright 2013, by Jeffrey G. Roberts I think it was the autumn of the year, when everyone in the village turned into cannibals. Yes, I believe it was indeed autumn. I distinctly remember my Evelyn saying she thought the foliage this year was particularly enchanting. And as I gaze about me at the town I was born in, this blessed hamlet of New Camdentown, Massachusetts, I am filled with diverse emotions. I look upon Father Emerson’s Lutheran House of Worship, I behold the King’s Tavern, the Government Meeting House, and the stables beyond. And as I survey all before me, I must ponder the events of the past four months, and ask myself- yea, search my soul: how did this all come about? What dark force infected our homes and families? And one can not answer such a question without bringing up- the red dot. All the townsfolk would concur with me. This I know to be so. Yet they are all dead now, and so cannot. I know not whether the red dot was a curse of the devil, or a judgment from God. But I, Mordecai Daitch, in this, the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy, am His humble servant. I must accept that His will be done. It is not mine to question His design or motives. I should not, even if I were so inclined. His mind is beyond human comprehension. And I must obey. The change came slowly, and with it came a rotting of the spirit, a hemorrhaging of the soul. But let the record speak for itself, and history judge us as it may. I shall not soon forget the events in New Camdentown. How could I? How could anyone? Well, if there remained anyone. Thus, allow me, your humble servant, Mordecai Daitch, to unfold the events to you, from the very beginning. Then you will know. James Daitch, 7, and William Daitch, 10, were the first to see it, while playing in the fields just outside of town, one fine summer day. They tried to make sense of it, but their minds were not configured to comprehend the incomprehensible. “James, what strange thing is that?” he said, pointing skyward nervously. But his younger brother was dumbstruck with both fear and wonderment. And as they both stood there, craning their necks- as if by looking harder at it they could make even an iota of sense of it- the sun caressed their faces, the breeze tousled their hair, and somehow they knew that things would never be the same again here. It was an unknown foreboding that gripped them- that an ill wind had now visited New Camdentown- and it filled their young hearts with dread. For there, approximately one hundred feet above their heads, floating silently, motionless, against all logic- was the red dot. Like a wound in the firmament, it appeared as an opening in the sky; a circular aberration perhaps forty feet in diameter, and parallel to the ground. Nothing could be seen within it, yet there was clearly a depth and dimension to its sinister form. They stared up at it until their neck muscles were sore. They soon realized the inordinate length of time they had been gazing at this impossible intruder into their lives. “We must tell father, James! He will know what this is. He will know what to do.” And they ran; with a sense of purpose, with a sense of dread, and with a spirit of fear they had never known before. Their parents were waiting outside their small hand-built house. “Papa! Momma!” the younger boy began yelling, before he even reached his home. “Father!” the elder William cried out. “What we have seen! Oh, what James and I have seen!” But the boy’s parents did not directly answer. Their attention was instead riveted on the clear blue sky. The “thing”, this intruder, this interloper in the affairs of Colonial men, had appeared high enough overhead, so that most people in town noticed it at the same time William and James had. And it filled their hearts with dread, as well. “Oh Papa, what is it?” James asked fearfully, as he clung closer to his mother’s side. “I know not, son.” “Come children. In the house,” their mother ordered. Who knew what this phenomenon was capable of? At least their household would offer a measure of safety, if only psychologically. “It looks like the maw of hell itself, if you ask me,” their mother said. “Evelyn, please. You’ll alarm the children. No doubt our fears are unfounded. Perhaps it is just a phenomenon of the clouds and weather we have not seen before. Yes, that surely is it. I should not be surprised if we wake on the morrow, to see the odd thing gone.” “And good riddance,” she added. But it was not gone the next day. And it was still there the day after that. And the day after that. It remained, immutable, like a blot in the sky, like an unwanted sentinel- right through New Camdentown’s harvest time, which was the worst anyone could recall. And no one knew why. The beans were like stones, and inedible. The meager corn crop yielded ears that were misshapen and stunted, their kernels a sickly black. The cabbages were a quarter their normal size, and blighted. A few townsfolk came down with horrid maladies soon after eating them- their bones becoming like rubber, their teeth bleeding, and eventually falling out. A few of the elderly actually died. A month after the red dot appeared, most of the well water began to exude a strange sulfurous odor. It did not help the citizen’s outlook for the future, when rivulets of it began to glow a sickly yellow upon the ground. New wells had to be dug, but most potable water had to be brought in from the next town over. Its citizens were wary, deeply concerned and apprehensive- that the insidious pestilence that had New Camdentown in its icy grip might soon infect their hamlet as well. By now the town fathers had had enough. Something had to be done. Determining precisely what the insidious red dot was- this was paramount. The very life of the village now depended on it. Thus, with the Mayor leading the way, a teacher, a land surveyor, the minister, and two militiamen rode into the clearing just outside of town, determined to find an explanation, and hopefully a solution, concerning the thing most of those in town were now referring to as unholy. They could see it from far off, and the closer they came to the spot where young William and James had first observed it, they were understandably filled with trepidation. The air had an almost palpable dread about it. All could feel it, which only increased their uneasiness. The conspicuous absence of the sound of birds or wildlife was unnerving as well. Someone could be heard murmuring the word “abomination.” And when they arrived at the spot, all froze in their tracks. Minister Emerson knelt down, closed his eyes, and quietly began prayers and supplications to God. The silence was deafening. For there, directly under the glare of the red dot, laid the skeletal remains of hundreds of birds, of all species. They lay in a mound, like a macabre abscess. The bones alone would have been an upsetting find, if not for one singular- and horrid- observation: all of them had become horribly deformed- grossly misshapen skulls, the remains of fang-like teeth in their jaws, and horn-like projections atop some of the heads. “May God have mercy on our souls,” the Mayor said quietly. And a brisk wind blew in from the east. And though it was the middle of summer, it chilled them to the bone. And it wasn’t the temperature. “This blasphemy will not stand!” one of the militiamen shouted. And he raised his musket, aiming it directly at the red dot high overhead. “No Captain, no!” the Mayor shouted. But it was too late. The soldier fired a musket ball directly into the circular opening in the sky. Almost immediately a greenish cloud of energy came out of the red dot and hit its mark, completely enveloping him. Within seconds, before the very eyes of his friends, his body- began to melt! His screams were unholy, as his arms and legs shriveled into masses of bubbling green ooze. The hissing sound the transformation made was now seared into the brains of those watching, helplessly. And the final horror they witnessed, before his body was turned into a melting mound of pus, was of his head exploding in a shower of gore. This was simply too much for their minds to accept, and their senses to endure. They ran in stark terror, in a blind panic, back to the village. In their horror they did not even take the time to saddle up their horses, which scattered in terror, as if even they sensed this was something dark and unholy; something to be avoided at all costs. Eventually, the cross of their salvation beckoned them; the only spiritual bulwark that their hearts could now turn to as a defense against this profane darkness. They raced into Pastor Emerson’s church, certain their hearts would burst, and their lungs explode. They slammed the oaken doors shut, and all collapsed on the floor, save for the Pastor, who could be seen embracing the cross by the pulpit with a holy grip of iron, in a desperate entreaty to God. But this was way beyond what their 18th century minds could grasp; beyond their science; beyond their most horrific nightmares- and they knew it. It was about this time that ten-year old William Daitch went blind. The pupil and irises of both eyes simply disappeared. All that remained were ghostly white orbs in his head. They had to keep him at home, for when he went out with his parents to church or to the general store, poor William was shunned- through no fault of his own. Townsfolk cruelly called him the spawn of the devil. That is, townsfolk that were still normal, still in possession of their senses, and who had not already transformed into- something else. And those numbers were increasing. At the end of July, Zebediah Gwinnett, a blacksmith, claimed to have seen, by the light of a full moon, a thing he could only describe as a denizen from hell. He claimed it had the vague appearance of a giant crab- but the size of a dog. Gwinnett reported it had two glowing red eyes, and hissed as it slowly walked down the main street that moonlit night, as if daring any human to confront it. Yet when he looked straight at it, his heart frozen in abject horror, the demonic creature vanished before his terrified eyes, in a flash of red smoke. By now the town fathers decided that they had to do something, anything, to stop the soul of the town from being sucked dry by that unholy thing in the sky. Perhaps if they erected a massive circular brick wall directly underneath it, it might prevent whatever invisible denizens were pouring out of it, from continuing their carnage. They had to take the chance- small as those chances might be. And so it was done, though workers were hard to come by. Outsiders were reluctant to enter New Camdentown. But they managed to accomplish the odd construction project somehow, in record time. The wall was fifty feet in diameter and ten feet high. They hoped, by the grace of God, that they could stop, or at least slow down this invading abomination, before their township became a colony of the hell that spawned it. But no one had any illusions about the possibilities for such success. Now, it was just a matter- of survival. But this latest attempt to forestall doom indeed did not succeed. The loathsome disintegration of the town had by now, if anything, accelerated. If hell had a graveyard, New Camdentown was what it looked like. Residents dared not contemplate where this would all end; what would the rotting corpse of the village look like when the insidious red dot completed its demonic “mission”? It was enough just to stay alive, though the term “living” was becoming increasingly questionable. In early September residents in town were awakened out of their restless sleep at 2:00 AM by a sound they later concurred could not have been of this Earth. It was a shriek which rent the air, and froze their hearts. Those that did not faint outright described it as sounding like a combination of a soul in torment, and a howling wolf. Many would have fled to church, but were too terrified to leave the ostensible safety of their homes. But those brave enough to peer out of their windows were met with a fearsome sight: the red dot was now glowing brighter, and dripping something phosphorescent onto the ground. This surely did not bode well. And as if the devil himself overheard their worst fears, he gleefully answered the citizens- by making them manifest. And it began on the Bowker farm, with an incident that redefined the word “horror” for all time, as word spread throughout the Massachusetts colony. The end was coming. And they all knew it. At least those that still remained alive. The Bowker farm consisted of German immigrants Eva and Otto Bowker, and their 13-year old son Hans. The boy had come down with a strange fever two weeks earlier. And it would not break. Nothing helped- not poultices, nor bleeding, nor even supplications to the Almighty. His strange sickness only worsened. And as his fever lingered on and on, and he became weaker and weaker, he would utter strange words in a language no one had ever heard before, and in a voice clearly not his own! How was this possible? By now, no one thought the red dot was a divine judgment from God, any longer. Indeed, most townsfolk were convinced that God had abandoned the citizens of New Camdentown. It seemed that hell reigned supreme in their village now. And what happened next to 13-year old Hans only reinforced this belief. It was the middle of October. The population of the town had dwindled precariously by now; through unnatural deaths, through heart attacks brought on by sheer terror, by malnutrition, and by those who had the wherewithal and resources to leave their once pleasant hamlet- which they now were convinced was cursed. And they would be correct. For at the stroke of midnight, near the time of All Hallows Eve, the wind was blowing hard. The trees, now stripped of all leaves and color, looked like giant skeletons, pointing their branches at residents’ homes, like accusatory bony fingers. And on that night, Eva and Otto Bowker were awakened by bizarre sounds. They feared the worst, and ran to their boy’s room. He was not there! How could this be, they wondered? He was clearly too weak to walk, having been unable and unwilling to take all but the most meager of nourishment. But if the strange sounds were not coming from Hans’ room, where were they coming from? They soon had their answer, though they wished to Almighty God that they hadn’t. For the profane and hellish shrieks sent them running outside to the barn. And what they saw instantly took Eva Bowker’s sight, with hysterical blindness, and caused her husband to retch his guts onto the dusty wooden floor. For there, inside the horse stall, was Hans. They knew this by his size, hair, and his bed clothes. Little else of their son was recognizable. He was by now almost a living skeleton, and his face had altered to such an extent that he barely resembled the strapping young boy he once was. And his pallor was a ghostly white. But why was he covered in blood? And where were the ungodly screams coming from? The answer was soon apparent: the Bowker’s horse was on its side, and was transforming and altering, even as the Bowker’s watched. It was thrashing and beginning to grow a second head! And its neck was elongating, like a serpent’s. And it was beginning to grow scales on its back, as well. This metamorphosis would be terrifying enough for the poor beast. But its screams were those of agony- as the younger Bowker was consuming its flesh, alive! The creature was now too weak to fight back against the boy’s new found demonic strength. Upon seeing this, Otto grabbed his son with all his strength and threw him to the ground and away from the horse. He then grabbed his musket against the wall, quickly primed it- and put the beast out of its misery. They kept Hans locked away in his room, his appetite for living flesh uncontrollable, his alien screams intolerable. His mother remained blind. Word quickly spread throughout the small community, of bizarre and similar incidents- some involving human flesh! On the 31st of October a solar eclipse blotted out the sun, and plunged the town into an unnatural darkness. Learned men of astronomy had known by now the causes of a solar eclipse- when the sun’s light is blotted out by the moon’s interposition between the sun and the Earth. No longer were men frightened by superstition and the strange darkness of such an explainable event. But in New Camdentown, Massachusetts, this eclipse was a portent of something far more horrible than a mere understood astronomical phenomenon. This occurrence signaled- the beginning of the end. For on this night, unholy screams and howling could be heard reverberating throughout the village. Hell had come to Earth. Fires and shootings could be heard during the long night. The sounds of breaking glass and tormented souls could almost be heard in neighboring hamlets. But no one would dare go into New Camdentown to investigate, or offer to help. No one would ever come to the site of the town any longer. The demonic malignancy had consumed it. By dawn it was all over. The hamlet known as New Camdentown, Massachusetts was no more. Because its residents were no more. Everyone was dead. Shot, stabbed, or cannibalized by one of their own. It was bloody carnage on a scale unfathomable to the normal human mind. In time the dead were buried in unmarked graves, the ground was sown with salt, and Holy Bibles were scattered everywhere, as a silent guardian and deterrent against such an unholy horror ever revisiting the New World again. Or so they hoped. Oh, they most fervently hoped. Yes, all were dead. Except one. Such were the events of the last four months, as chronicled by me, your humble servant, Mordecai Daitch. You may ask why I was spared the carnage. I know not. All I know is that I see and hear, walk God’s Earth, and feel the sun on my face as I greet each new day. Surely it must have been God’s will. But Evelyn was indeed correct: beyond New Camdentown I don’t think I have ever seen such lovely fall foliage. True, I am a bit lonely at times. But at least I shall never go hungry. As such, I must be on my way. The hour is late. Stratford Village is the next hamlet over, and I shan’t miss my dinner. So much to choose from! I hope my Evelyn did not suffer too much. How I admired and loved her. Those beautiful blue eyes. Delicious. New Camdentown was now a rotting cemetery. No one ever went near the area again. All gave the former hamlet a wide berth, reciting prayers even when quite a distance away. Even birds never flew over it any longer. But not quite everything was still. One night in November, a month after the carnage, when the moon was full, and played eerie shadows on the dead land below what had been New Camdentown, something was stirring, something was moving. It was the makeshift grave of 10-year old William Daitch. The earth began to crumble around it. After a few minutes a “thing” emerged. It was the remains of the poor boy! Yet he was not quite alone in his grave. Something was moving around- inside him! It began gnawing its way out, until all of poor William had been consumed, and something new emerged out of him- something dark, malignant, and blasphemous. It was not from this world- nor any other; but a realm beyond worlds. This “thing” then emerged from the grave, stood up on its cloven hoofs, and turned toward the desecrated town. It was very pleased by what it saw, as a sardonic smile crossed its unearthly face. It then turned back and looked up at the red dot. Shutting its red eyes, the creature suddenly disappeared in a flash of luminous energy, and rocketed straight into the red dot- which then closed up- and vanished!(Footnote: six months later, residents of Mexico City woke up one morning to the strangest sight: an odd red circular phenomenon, hanging motionless one hundred feet in the sky. Learned men from the Universidad assured nervous citizens that the phenomenon was no doubt meteorological in nature, and would most likely dissipate within forty-eight hours.)THE END

Around 2035, an interplanetary craft from Earth will touch down in an area of the Northern hemisphere of Mars; an area known as Cydonia. Location: 9.5 degrees W. longitude, 41 degrees N. Latitude. And as the crimson sands of the Martian deserts wail across the cold forbidding plains at -90 F., what will the emerging crew see before them? That all depends upon what the Viking I orbiter saw in that exact same area, fifty-nine years earlier, on July 25th, 1976.

And therein lies the tale that will not die, the controversy that will not go away; the conspiracy as some call it , of a NASA cover-up more massive and pervasive than any other since the founding of the United States 236 years ago.

For on its 35th orbit of Mars, Viking I, at an altitude of 1162 miles, snapped its 72nd photograph to send back to Earth - number 35A72 and nothing would ever be the same again. For there, staring back at Viking I into the starry night, was what appeared to be the visage of a face. A face almost 2600 feet high (the Empire State Building in New York is only 1250 feet in height), 1.6 miles wide, and 1.2 miles in length! It appeared Sphinx-like, as if the ancient Egyptian edifice was staring straight up into space.

And on the third planet from the sun , all hell broke loose. NASA imaging scientists Vincent DiPietro and Greg Molenaar were the first to discover this incredible anomaly, and dutifully brought it to the attention of their superiors, believing, rightly, that an unbiased scientific inquiry would now commence, to determine just what the face was. They realized that the discovery of an artificially constructed edifice of such titanic proportions would have the scientific world abuzz - unlimited access at their disposal, for what had the potential to be a shattering revelation , that we were not alone.

But that was not what happened. Far from it. DiPiero and Molenaar were, instead, vilified, shunned, and threatened by their peers! As Shakespeare's Hamlet said,Me thinks he protesteth too much! Why the attitude? Why the intellectual timidity? Perhaps some didn't want us to know that we were not alone; or perhaps didn't want to share the spotlight with a superior race - even if that race had been extinct for millennia. Perhaps itís just human nature and ego. If so, it's also intellectually dishonest. Perhaps governments and institutions of higher learning feared their vast intellect and contributions to society would be reduced to utter anachronisms overnight, should the knowledge of alien life in our planetary backyard be exposed to an eager public. Why answer the charges when you could attack the character and integrity of the one making them?

And on the 4th planet from the sun, the megalith known as The Face on Mars, continued to stare out into the cosmic void, whether the primitive creatures on the 3rd planet believed in it, or not. Like the Wizard of Oz said ,pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! As Arthur C. Clarke said, the Biblical premise that God made man in his own image would be a ticking time bomb, in the face of such a momentous revelation. How would the religious institutions on Earth deal with such a monumental discovery? Many think they could not. And a Rand think tank study said as much, too.As the eerie pictures of the face began to appear in the popular press, NASA was deluged with questions: Who built it? What is its purpose? Where are the builders now? Of course, NASA could not answer any of them. They preferred instead to shun it, hoping the whole Face on Mars controversy would go away. But it didn't. No more than the Face's surrounding pyramids did - some with 1000 times the internal volume of the Great pyramid at Ghiza! And geomorphologists, geologists, and cartographers agree that wind erosion will never form a symmetrical polyhedron with perfect sides, as has been photographed next to the Face. Mathematical, geometrical, and trigonometric measurements of both the face and its surrounding pyramids, showed an exact and repeating sequence, indicating intelligent design, not random, utilizing sacred geometry and Pi with knife-like precision. And as more data was received, photographs 35A72, along with 70A13, and others, showed that the Face, whatever it was, seemed to reveal a kind of headdress or helmet, a tear below the right eye , and teeth in the mouth! Quite a feat for a natural geological formation!NASA was quick to point out that the Face was merely a trick of light and shadow. Except if that were true, the ìillusion would have disappeared when viewed from different positions. It didn't. It retained its face-like features no matter what angle it was viewed from. And there is no known process of wind-borne erosion that can create straight angles. It would be as if a tornado blew apart a house, then returned, took all the flotsam & jetsam of the home within its swirling vortex , and re-built it exactly the way it was before!Indeed, Mark Carlotto of the United States Analytic Sciences Corporation, after subjecting frames 35A72 and 70A13 to computer fractal analysis and 3-D scans, automatically correcting for azimuth of the sun and shadow angles, revealed that The Face on Mars was the least natural object for 24,140 miles in all directions. The chances of that happening are beyond astronomical - unless the face was artificial, and constructed by an intelligence.

The controversy is much like the UFO controversy. The government has always been quick to label UFO's as weather balloons, mis-identification, the planet Venus, or optical illusions. Strange, though: if you're a military or airline pilot, or even a private individual who witnessed a UFO, or a landing, you could be threatened with court martial, job termination, or a prison term. Ever heard of being threatened with loss of freedom over an optical illusion?

Indeed, Professor Stanley McDaniel, of Sonoma State University, said in 1992 that he became concerned over the glaring mistakes in the arguments used by NASA to reject their research. [the Face on Mars analysis]" With each new NASA document encountered, I became more and more appalled by the impossibly bad quality of the reasoning used. It grew more and more difficult to believe that educated scientists could engage in such faulty reasoning, unless they were following some sort of hidden agenda aimed at suppressing the true nature of the data."(An interesting footnote to the Face on Mars controversy: in 1947, Japanese sculptor Isamu Naguchi proposed creating a large human head, projecting its face skywards, and to be a mile long. Ironically, it was to be entitled,The sculpture to be seen from Mars!)

But in 1983 the entire Face on Mars debate exploded into the public consciousness, as Richard C. Hoagland saw the photographic analysis of DiPietro and Molenaar and soon became the unofficial spokesman for millions of people, convinced that our government was withholding and/or doctoring evidence of an alien civilization within our own solar system. He then took up the mantle, almost single-handedly, to prove this. And his accomplishments as a science writer made him the perfect poster boy for bringing this explosive revelation to light. He was curator of the Astronomy & Space Science division of the Springfield, Massachusetts Museum of Science at 18; science advisor to Walter Cronkite at 23; a consultant to several TV science documentaries, a well as a consultant to NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center. He has written for Omni, Analog, and Science Digest, and is the author of The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever, and co-author, with Mike Bara, of Dark Mission - The Secret History of NASA. He suggested the plaque ultimately carried aboard Pioneer 10; as well as the GalileoExperiment conducted by astronaut David Scott on Apollo 15, in 1971. Hoagland also wrote the Europa Proposal , that organic compounds could exist under the frozen surface of the 2nd moon of Jupiter, in an ocean of liquid water. The planned Europa probe of these oceans stems from his initial proposal. He has established the Mars Project, and EnterpriseMission.com, to pressure NASA and the scientific community at large, to further investigate the Face on Mars - whatever it is - and not to sweep it under the rug, hoping it will go away.

In 1998 Mars Global Surveyor re-photographed Cydonia, at an altitude of 250 miles, with ten times the resolution of Viking I. It showed the face to be nothing more than a giant, eroded mountain, just as NASA had proclaimed all along. Or was it? Immediately, cries of a cover-up and charges of doctored images began to leak to the press. And it certainly didn't help NASA's official position when images of both Mars, as well as the moon, began to surface from the thousands taken, and found by independent imaging analysts to indeed having been doctored : airbrushed- out structures, anomalies, and unexplainable things, which would have proved embarrassing to NASA at best, catastrophic at worst.

Indeed, after 1992, NASA announced that it would no longer fly over the area of Cydonia. Why? In August, the far more advanced Mars Science Lab, known as Curiosity, will have touched down in the Aeolis Palus region of Gale Crater. It will there for one Martian year, or 687 days, roving as far as twelve miles, searching for life, past or present, analyzing Martian geology, climate, and investigating future landing sites. Unfortunately, the plains of Cydonia will be quite a distance away.

But whether formless pile of rock on a windswept mountain, or an artificially constructed colossal monument by an ancient race, sometime within the next twenty years - we will know.

So, some warm summer night, step out onto your front porch, and gaze up at that tiny red dot in the night sky; identifiable out of all those stars , as the planet Mars. And maybe , just perhaps , a thought might impinge on your mind from that far-off world: we were here. This is who we were.